Mohsen Abdelmoumen: In your book « Les économistes contre la Démocratie: Pouvoir, Mondialisation et Démocratie » (Economists Against Democracy: Power, Globalization and Democracy), you are very critical of economists. Can you explain why?

Dr. Jacques Sapir: It is mainly because economists have appropriated a power that is not theirs. They have indeed penetrated the inner workings of the ruling apparatus. This is true at the State level, as to that of major international organizations, whether it is in the European Union, the OECD or the WTO. They are thus increasingly inclined to intervene on all social and political problems. But when they occur, it is by mixing an experts position and a position of political actors. This poses an immediate problem. For, if the expert is legitimate to speak on behalf of an acquaintance, the political actor must comply with the rule of democratic debate. By having it both ways, economists are exonerated from the problem of verification. The problem, therefore, is to know in which space one speaks, in that of pure competence or in that of political choices. If it is in the latter, it is no longer possible to accept that the « expertise » alone can decide the debate, expertise which can no longer be verified because any judgment would combine elements of competence and political values. If one is in the political space, then the question of legitimacy arises. Now, this question immediately refers to the higher-level issue of sovereignty. In the space of politics, one asks first who is legitimate, and who is sovereign.

But there is a problem that is deeper. The scientific credibility they claim to be is far from being indisputable, or undisputed. There are very serious reasons for this, which I explained in a book dating back to the early 2000s1. The very way in which the majority of the profession, the economists of the mainstream, understands the object of its work, is today debated and strongly criticized2. The methods used by these economists, the models on which they are based, are openly contested. This is particularly the case of models inspired by the neoclassical economy, whether they are the CGE (Computable General Equilibrium) models or whether they are DSGE (Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium)3. And this refers to a more general debate about the use that can be made of models4.

But, as legitimate and necessary as this contestation is, it nevertheless leaves in the shadow an essential point: the spontaneous political thought of economists, or more precisely of this mainstream. In fact, economists do politics, what nobody ever thinks to reproach them for, but they do politics by pretending not to do so, and by delegitimizing in advance any critical discourse. This is, of course, a serious attack on democracy.

Economics would not be the normative and prescriptive discipline that it is, and if the economists had remained in their offices and classrooms, this question would, in reality, have little interest. But when one confides to economists, or merely to economic reasoning, the task of guiding decisions whose magnitude and consequences far outweigh the economy, this question becomes legitimate. When the economy is gradually transformed into a technical system whose terms of choice are no longer accessible to ordinary citizens, this question becomes imperative. It is even central to understanding the evolution of democracy in our countries.

It is not a question here of questioning the partisan choices of such and such, or even of challenging the right of an economist to take political positions. It does not matter to democracy to know whether such and such votes on the left or on the right. But it is necessary that he clarifies, when he does, that he takes political positions and accepts the rules of political debate. He can not take refuge, then, in a technical argument or, if he does, he must know that he is taking positions that are fundamentally anti-democratic.

Nor is it a matter of questioning the formal attachment to democracy of some of my colleagues. I am convinced that, with the utmost sincerity, one can assert oneself deeply attached to democracy and at the same time provide advice or defend norms whose effects will be profoundly dangerous for this democracy. The love of servitude is all the more destructive, and all the more profound, because it is adorned with a formal defense of its opposite.

You are a renowned economist. Do not you think that economics, like other sciences, has reached its limits by serving the ruling classes?

Economics is above all a critical science, and therefore a social science. The idea of building it on the model of mechanics, even of physics of the nineteenth century, was a huge mistake on the part of the economists who carried it. This is demonstrated with great talent Mirowski5. It must enable us to understand not general laws, but the tendentious, local and particular laws of economic activity6. If the economy (and the economist) confines himself to this, he does not put himself at the service of the ruling classes. But, some theories are actually the expression of the spontaneous thought of the dominant classes. And this poses a problem when we leave the analytical framework to enter in the field of normative and prescriptive.

Here we must question the conception of the social and political order which arises spontaneously from certain conceptions of the economic order. What we want to highlight is the link between some of the hypotheses of orthodox economic reasoning and the political consequences of the prescriptions that flow from them. It is an important task, considering the terms in France, in Europe but also in the international authorities.

This spontaneous thought carries with it the figures of the depoliticization of economic policy, the naturalization of the economy, the substitution of technical choices to the democratic choices. It leads, on a gentle slope, by successive shifts, to tyranny. From this point of view, it is now obvious that we are confronted with the limits of the theoretical frameworks in which the consensus of economists has developed, at least of the mainstream. Here we are dealing with limitations in terms of explanations, but also with limits on the coherence and even the consistency of canonical models, and finally on a method that is less and less scientific7. From this point of view, it may be thought that by taking up the discourse of the ruling classes, sometimes consciously but sometimes also unconsciously, and by seeking to give it the appearance of a so-called scientific thought, economics has ceased to be a science. But that does not mean that there can be no economic science. It is not because generations of economists have failed that this condemns the project of existence of economic science.

The present decadence of dominant economic thought is not that of the economic science. There is nothing in this latter which makes it an instrument of brainwashing of the rulers or a justification of inaction. This present decadence is not the result of a fundamental error in the economy, but rather of the conjunction of the failure of a particular research program, that we can qualify, to simplify, as a liberal recovery of the Keynesian heritage, and of a refusal of a part of economists, unfortunately majority, to develop a robust methodology. Building on wind, they promise us only harvests of storms.

It may be thought that one of the central problems of economic science is to establish the typology and forms of modes of coordination between actors who are both physically separated and interdependent8.

The essential question is not also to know whether the economy will be a « hard science ». The opposition between sciences deemed soft and those which assert themselves hard is already suspicious. Beyond that, there is much illusion, or pretension, to believe that a discipline can self-affirm itself in a register of which it would exclude the others, in whole or in part. The fundamental problem is not the status of economics as science but the understanding by economists themselves of the conditions in which they work. This involves a discussion on the methodological bases9, field carefully avoided by the economists representative of the dominant economy, or « mainstream »10, when they do not really seek to delegitimize any reflection on the methodology11.

I am very interested in your work and I see you as a witness of the Soviet Union collapse. Has the capitalist system triumphed over the Bolshevik Revolution without offering any prospects to humanity?

In fact, it is necessary here to question what the Soviet Union really was. As a pupil of Charles Bettelheim, I developed a heterodox vision of the USSR, based on the idea that the October 1917 Revolution had given rise to a system of State capitalism. This system became more complex with the « great turning point » and the Stalinist policy in the late 1920s12. It gained stability – albeit relative – in the 1950s13. The big Polish economist, Oskar Lange, who was one of the main theorists of the planning14, did not hesitate, for example, to describe the « really existing » planning in Eastern Europe of sui-generis war economy; by there he didn’t mean an economy centered on military productions, but an economy based on the systems of orders and priorities that had been known in the two world conflicts15.

The analysis of the economic forms that have begun to coagulate in Russia since 2000 suggests a return to a model of development where the weight of the State will be particularly important, whether in direct or indirect forms. At the same time, these economic forms are reminiscent of those found in the Russian development model of the years 1880-1914. This is particularly noticeable in the banking sector, but also concerns the very strong collusion between large industrial groups and political power. But the question of the intertemporal permanence of developmental patterns raises some fundamental theoretical questions for the economy and the social sciences. Are we in the presence of a particularly powerful « path dependency », or must we analyze this permanence as an appearance, the actors of the present reusing for other purposes past institutional molds? Does the persistence of some institutional forms in development models spread over nearly 120 years reflect the relevance of these forms in relation to the problems of development, or on the contrary, the persistence of past habits, which we will then tend to call archaisms? The permanence of the structures, given the opprobrium with which the old system was struck and the radical nature of the reforms adopted in 1992 and 1993, constitute a question which can not be avoided. That the Soviet system is dead, however, is not doubtful; it was dead in reality before its dismantling in the late eighties. But what emerges today, in particular the tendency towards the constitution of a corporatist system16, largely refers to the Soviet legacy.

It is also true that the USSR had not rid itself of Russian legacies in one day or one year. Whether it is the permanence of administrations, at least until 192917, of the proximity of the Soviet industrialist discourse to that of the modernizing minister Witte in the 19th century, and even of social practices, both rural and urban, that we can track until the 40s, he continuities are much greater than the mythical representations, positive or negative, of the 1917 Revolution, can imagine18. This theme of permanences, transformed and recomposed by the development movement, is one of the axes of the interpretation that Moshe Lewin gave of the Soviet system19.

It is therefore incontestable that the leaders of the USSR were aware, and often in the sense of a tragic conscience, of the presence of these archaisms. Nevertheless, and here one could draw a parallel between the modernization of a Peter the Great and that of a Stalin, the methods used to modernize are the cause of the survival, or even the reinforcement of the elements described as archaic20. In either case, the pace of modernization requires the use or strengthening of old structures whether it is serfdom at the beginning of the eighteenth century or the ancestral command modes in the course of the Soviet industrialization, with a mode of manpower management and a relationship to very primitive man/machine relations21. This combination, not always happy, between the products of modernization and archaic practices, even between technical elements of various origins, is attested at length by both Soviet sources and Western witnesses22. Remember that is regarded as pathological, since Durkheim, survival in the present of generalities having been caused by conditions that have since disappeared23. From this point of view, the Soviet system can be considered as pathological, and this is undoubtedly one of the ways suggested by Lewin when he speaks of Stalinism as a systemic pathology24. However, the image of social structures, norms of behavior surviving the disappearance of their root causes is not perfectly convincing. If one agrees to leave the USSR and Russia for another moment to take an interest in another trajectory of modernization, that of contemporary Japan, we will find the duality between the new and the old. The persistence of traditional social relations, as well as that of old forms of economic organization, was decisive elements in the success of the strategy of the Meiji era25. We must therefore consider whether the reinforcement in the current Russia of the behaviors inherited from the Soviet period, such as bilateral relations, practices of collusion between directors, but also the integration of workers through the development of the company’s social functions, necessarily constitute negative phenomena. The success of any modernization strategy most likely involves the ability to reuse traditional forms, and not by the direct and integral projection and application of all the forms considered to be modern and directly borrowed from societies considered to be more advanced.

We must therefore understand the Soviet period as the specific form to Russia taken by the development of capitalism, a form which has also resulted in the transformation of this capitalism and which makes Russia today a capitalist system, but which can not be assimilated either in the United States or in the various European capitalisms.

Is de-globalization the only resistance we still face the ultra-liberalism?

De-globalization is well on the agenda today, as I indicated in a book dating from 201126. It is by no means the only resistance that can be opposed to neo-liberalism or ultra-liberalism and we can think of forms of ecological resistance for example. But it is very clearly today the form in which the decisive battle is played out. This is why the struggle for the sovereignty of nations, that the latter is incarnated in the popular sovereignty – which is obviously desirable – or that it is incarnated in simple sovereignty, is now decisive. This is what motivated the writing of my book on sovereignty27.

One of the essential features of the current period is that we are experiencing the beginning of an ebbing of economic globalization, what is called in France « mondialisation » and « globalization » in the Anglo-Saxon world28, even though this term has in reality a wider meaning. This implies that history and politics should resume their rights with the return of States which were said once impotent, and the decline of markets, which were claimed omniscient29.

Indeed, the world has seen many episodes of flow and ebb in the field of trade. Historians of the economy had noted it well30. From now on, it is the very link between world growth and free trade that is openly contested by economists who are not especially heterodox31. But it is true that this de-globalization arises in the wake of a major crisis. Then old fears wake up. And if this de-globalization announced the return to the time of wars? But these fears are, in reality, only the other side of a lie that was propagated through ignorance, for some, and by interest, for others. No, mondialisation or globalization was not, was never, « happy ». The myth of « soft trade », which was substituted for warlike conflicts, was too propagated to not leave a trace… In truth, it is only a myth. Still, the warship preceded the merchant ship. The dominant powers have constantly used their strength to open up markets and modify the terms of trade as they see fit. But this past two decades did not provide grist to the mill of advocates of free trade32. In fact, the latter did not eliminate the conflicts. The progress of free trade stopped with the crisis of 2008-2010. The Doha Round proved to be a failure33. The number of protectionist measures taken in various countries since 2010 has been steadily increasing. Therefore, the turning point taken by the United States under the direction of Donald Trump, however spectacular it may be, is less astonishing than one might have thought34. It occurs in the context of a general rehabilitation of the developer State35. It is now significant that free trade is challenged by the United States, by an American president, and moreover by a person known to be close to the business world. Indeed, criticism of free trade came more from the countries of the « South » and governments considered left-wing or at least populist. The times are thus ripe for a global rethinking of the process of globalization and for a more accurate understanding of the causes of growth at the international level36.

Is not the conception of Europe fascist?

It is wrong here to speak of « Europe » as if it were an institution or a federation. The only reality of Europe is a historical reality, diverse, and above all a cultural reality. If you go to Vladivostok in Russia, you are in a European city. What is now a problem for democracy is the existence of the European Union, which is an institution and of which we can follow the evolution from the origin, that is to say the Maastricht Treaty. Indeed, the evolution of the European Union since 2007-2009 is a real problem. There, yes, unquestionably, we are in the presence of a structure that tends to develop itself without control or responsibility. The statements of Jean-Claude Juncker in the Greek election of January 2015 testify it37. The behavior of the EU and the institutions of the Euro zone call for an overall reaction because these institutions contest this freedom that is sovereignty38. Let us remind here the quotation from Mr. Jean-Claude Juncker, the successor of the ineffable Barroso at the head of the European Commission: « There can be no democratic choice against European treaties ». This revealing statement dates from the Greek election of January 25, 2015, which precisely saw the victory of SYRIZA. In a few words, everything is said. It is the quiet and satisfied affirmation of the superiority of non-elected institutions over the voting of voters, of the superiority of the technocratic principle over the democratic principle.

The basic rules of democracy are systematically violated. The British woke up this reality and drew logical conclusions from it with the BREXIT and the decision to leave the European Union. f I do not use the term « fascist », because I believe very much in the necessary precision of terms, and that « fascism » implies a totalitarian project, with forms of population indoctrination from the cradle to the grave, the European Union has clearly become today a liberticidal institution and a dangerous project for the various European peoples.

On the other hand, it is clear that European leaders take up the Soviet Union’s discourse with Eastern Europe in 1968 when the Warsaw Pact intervened in Prague: the famous theory of limited sovereignty. They regard the member countries of the European Union as colonies, or more precisely « dominions », whose sovereignty was subject to that of the metropolis (Great Britain). Except that in this case, there is no metropolis. The European Union would therefore be a colonial system without a metropolis. And, perhaps, it is only colonialism by proxy. Behind the figure of a so-called united Europe, but which is today divided by European institutions, we can see the figure of the United States, a country to which Brussels is constantly yielding. Some have done it, like Stefano Fassina in Italy39. I have said it, and I have written it, and I do not deny it. At some point it will be necessary to draw the consequences, and all the consequences40.

What is your reading of the new Trump administration policy?

The Trump administration puts us in front of an interesting contradiction. On the one hand, it is clearly an administration resulting from a populist project. This project clearly has regressive elements within it. But the Trump administration also allows us to ask a whole series of questions about the rationality of free trade which today has become not a theory but an ideology, not a simple ideology but a religion. This is particularly evident in the case of the European Union.

Indeed, President Donald Trump did not wait until he took office on January 20, 2017, to start implementing part of his economic program, either internally41 or through protectionist pressures and the calling into question of free trade agreements. Whether it is the Trans-Pacific Treaty (the TPP), the NAFTA (signed several decades ago with Mexico and Canada), or even a measure calling into question the authority of the WTO, it is indeed a widespread offensive against the very principle of free trade that we are witnessing. This offensive raises many questions about its relevance and the commercial policy that President Trump wants to implement for the United States. It is, moreover, very interesting to note that economists who are ranked on the left on the political spectrum admit today that a treaty like NAFTA has caused significant damage to the Mexican economy for example42.

Donald Trump’s recent statements as well as his pressures on major industry groups through Twitter messages (for Toyota43, Ford and General Motors), if they may appear somewhat exotic, have therefore revived the question of modern forms of protectionism. From this point of view, the Trump administration should be credited with a positive contribution to the debate on the need to move away from widespread free trade and to rethink forms of protectionism.

It is an interesting, but rather paradoxical point, that free trade is called into question by the President considered the most « pro-business », but also the most indifferent to ecological concerns, that the United States have seen for many years.

Beyond the questionable political style of Donald Trump, let’s admit that his project is part of the great reversal announced a few years ago. We do not yet know whether Donald Trump will succeed in articulating a genuine policy of re-industrialization of his country, a policy that would benefit the largest number of people. But its policy takes into account, unlike what can be seen in the European Union, which the era of free trade is now over.

Does your RussEurope website have an impact on raising the awareness of European citizens about geostrategic issues?

When I created, in September 2012, with the technical assistance of the FMSH (Foundation House of Human Sciences), and in particular of Nicolas de Lavergne whom I would like to warmly thank, my scientific notebook RussEurope, I had no idea how important it would be. However, its growth has been truly spectacular. During the first year, attendance (the number of connections) rose gradually to 1500 per day, after experiencing a peak at 3800 connections/day end of April 2013. This result had already surprised me because I did not think I had more than 1000 connections/day (or 30,000 per month), given the subjects I was dealing with and which were fairly specialized. Then, the number of connections has steadily increased to reach 6300 connections days (about 200 000 connections/months) in December 2014. It was there that I realized that my notebook had become, whether I like it or not, a media as such.

I had noticed that the readership of the booklet was reacting to international events, be it the crisis in Ukraine and the Donbass or, of course, the Cypriot crisis and the Greek crisis. In January-February 2015, following the attacks in Paris (Charlie-Hebdo) but also the rise of the Greek crisis, readership has jumped, reaching 7200-7500 days connections, reaching peaks in June-July 2015 with peaks at over 24,000 connections / day. Relative calm from September to October reduced attendance to around 6500 connections / day, but as a result of the terrorist attacks of November 2015, the declaration of the state of emergency and the political unrest that occurred in early 2015, this frequentation is raised to the 8000 connections/day.

Today, in February 2017, following the maneuver launched by the newspaper Le Monde and aimed at discrediting alternative sources of information, the so-called “decodex” case, the attendance is actually averaged weekly from 9200 to 12000 connections/day with, for the first 15 days of February, 8 peaks of frequentation above 10,000 and 2 peaks above 15,000. For the year 2016, there were an average of 220,000 connections per month, coming from a regular readership (identified by the IP of their computer) of 87,000 people on average per month.

So it is clear that RussEurope has an audience that goes far beyond what I was expecting. The fact I am publishing on the notebook in English (with the help of a translator, Mme de Grazia), in Italian (with the help of Mr. Ruzic), sometimes in Spanish and Russian has certainly contributed to the international audience of the notebook. My readership is in principle francophone at 50 % (France, Belgium, Switzerland), then come the United States and Great Britain, then Germany and Italy (where I know by twitter that the book is tracked, and regularly translated on various sites), then in Russia.

It seems to me that my readers, and you are right to say « European », and even beyond, appreciate in my notebook the economic and geopolitical dimensions. I think, however, that what the readers are looking for is more my economic analyzes, and of course the political consequences that flow from them. Geostrategic issues are, of course, important, and I attach great importance to them myself, but I do not feel that they attract the greatest number of readers. From this point of view, I am very faithful to what I had written at the opening of my notebook, which I will concentrate on the economic issues of France, the European Union and Russia. Hence the name of the notebook: RussEurope

Interview realized by Mohsen Abdelmoumen

Who is Dr. Jacques Sapir?

Jacques Sapir is a French economist expert in Russian economy and strategic issues, but also an internationally renowned economic theorist known for his independent positions. He advocates the sovereignty of nations and de-globalization. After questioning the future of the euro and the possible need for France to exit the euro, it now advocates for a dissolution of the single currency. He was elected in October 2016 as a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences as a stranger.

Graduate of the IEPP in 1976, Jacques Sapir supported a postgraduate doctorate on the organization of work in the USSR between 1920 and 1940 (EHESS, 1980) and a Ph.D. in economics devoted to investment cycles in the Soviet economy (Paris-X, 1986).

He taught macroeconomics and financial economics at the University of Paris-X Nanterre from 1982 to 1990, and at the ENSAE (National School of Statistics and Economic Administration, 1989-1996) before joining the school of higher studies in Social Sciences in 1990. He is Director of Studies since 1996 and heads the Center for the Study of Modes of Industrialization (CEMI-EHRESS). He has also taught in Russia at the High College of Economics (1993-2000) and at the Moscow School of Economics since 2005.

He leads the IRSES research group at the FMSH (Foundation House of Human Sciences) and co-organizes with the Institute of Forecasting of the National Economy (IPEN-ASR) the Franco-Russian seminar on the financial and monetary problems of the development of Russia.